The Butler report

The intelligence: flawed The dossier: dodgy The
45-minute claim: wrong Dr Brian Jones: vindicatedIraq's link to
al-Qa'ida: unproven The public: misled The case for war:
exaggerated And who was to blame? No one

15 July 2004

Tony Blair was under renewed fire over Iraq last night after an
official inquiry found that the intelligence on which he based his case
for war was "seriously flawed", but failed to hold anyone responsible.

A committee chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet
secretary, produced a hard-hitting report which criticised the Government
and the intelligence services over the claims made about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction before last year's war.

The five-month inquiry concluded the infamous claim that Iraq could
deploy WMD in just 45 minutes should not have been included in the dossier
issued by the Government in September 2002. In a personal criticism, it
said Mr Blair's language in the Commons may have reinforced the impression
that the intelligence underpinning the claims was "fuller and firmer" than
it actually was.

Last night Mr Blair's allies were confident he would ride out the
storm, after the Butler team cleared him and other ministers of
deliberately misleading the public or Parliament about the case for war.
Some aides even hoped the report would help him achieve "closure" over his
decision. But there was little sign of an end to the controversy at
Westminster.

MPs were dismayed that the inquiry attributed "collective" rather than
individual blame for the severe failings it uncovered. Many MPs were
asking where the buck stops, but there were few answers. It is believed
the inquiry team felt Mr Blair was ultimately responsible but decided not
to say so in its report. One member said: "There is no smoking gun but
it's a slow-burning fuse. It's all there in the report. It all goes back
to the Prime Minister. There is only one man who is responsible: it is
Blair."

But Mr Blair told the Commons the inquiry's report showed everyone had
acted in good faith. "No one lied. No one made up the intelligence," he
said. "That issue of good faith should now be at an end."

The Prime Minister adopted his most conciliatory tone ever on Iraq but
stopped short of the apology demanded by some critics. "For any mistakes
made, as the report finds, in good faith I of course take full
responsibility, but I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam
was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and
safer place without Saddam," he said. The Tories saw the Butler report as
another blow to Mr Blair's already low trust ratings. Michael Howard
contrasted Mr Blair's public comments about the threat from Iraq with the
caveats in the intelligence which suggested the danger was "sporadic and
patchy".

He accused the Prime Minister of turning the "qualified judgements" of
the intelligence agencies into "unqualified certainties" in an effort to
make the case for war. "I hope we will not face in this country another
war in the foreseeable future, but if we did and you identified the
threat, would the country believe you?" he demanded.

One damaging revelation buried in yesterday's report is that Sir
Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, personally warned Mr Blair that a
last-minute piece of evidence which emerged 12 days before publication of
the dossier - and was seized on by the Prime Minister - was "unproven" and
"unvalidated".

Lord Butler criticised the way decisions on the "vital matter of war
and peace" were taken by a "small circle" of key ministers and advisers
around Mr Blair without properly consulting the Cabinet. Downing Street
insisted the problem had already been rectified.

But most of the inquiry's fire was directed at the gathering of the
intelligence by MI6 and the assessment of it by the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC), chaired by John Scarlett. It said it was "mistaken" for
the JIC to accept ownership of the 2002 dossier because it had meant "more
weight was placed on the intelligence than it could actually bear". The
dossier was at the "outer limits" of the available intelligence.

With pressure growing among MPs from all parties for Mr Scarlett's
appointment as the next head of MI6 to be blocked, the Butler committee
took the highly unusual step of declaring that his promotion should be
validated. It suggested he had been too close to Downing Street, saying
future JIC chairmen should be "demonstrably beyond influence" and have
"experience of dealing with ministers in a very serious role".

The Prime Minister also threw a protective shield around Mr Scarlett,
fuelling criticism at Westminster.

In The Independent today, Robin Cook, who resigned from the
Cabinet over the war, writes: "This must be the most embarrassing failure
in the history of British intelligence. Yet according to Lord Butler no
one is to blame. Everyone behaved perfectly properly and nobody made a
mistake.

"Poor things, they were let down by the system and institutional
weaknesses. John Scarlett gets his very own specially printed
get-out-of-jail-free card."

Mr Cook adds: "Tony Blair needed a catharsis if he was to put the
controversy of Iraq behind him. Yet by pretending that all is well and
everybody did their best, first Hutton and now Butler have denied him any
opportunity for catharsis. Yesterday, the Prime Minister should have been
admitting that there were serious mistakes, that lessons had been learnt,
and that, above all, it will never happen again."

In another article in today's paper, Lord Wright of Richmond, a former
JIC chairman, warns Mr Blair that the Butler report will not end the
controversy. "The Prime Minister tried to give the impression that the
arguments are now closed. I do not believe they are," he writes. Michael
Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "The buck stops with Blair.
The credibility of the Prime Minister on matters of intelligence is
vitally important. He never answered the questions about why he failed to
include the reservations and qualifications that were made by the
intelligence services. Until he does, his credibility is on trial."

Peter Kilfoyle, the Labour MP and former defence minister, said: "The
buck stops with the Prime Minister. I think it is typical of the way that
the establishment stick together and nobody is prepared to take the blame
for the mistakes."

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrats' leader, called for a full
public inquiry into the preparation for the Iraq war. He said: "We are not
terribly surprised by Lord Butler's conclusions. He was asked to look at
systems and institutions rather than to look at the judgements of
individual political players and the interface between those players and
the intelligence services, and that's what he did.

"It's these political relationships which remain the unopened Pandora's
box in the middle of all this, and that continue to underline the need for
a proper public inquiry into the political judgements made about this war
and how they were arrived at."

Hans Blix, the United Nations' former chief weapons inspector, said the
dossier on Iraq's weapons capability was "hyped and spun" to a point where
the public was misled because vital caveats about the intelligence were
left out. He told BBC World's Hardtalk programme: "I think it was a
spin that was not acceptable. They put exclamation marks where there had
been question marks and I think that is hyping, a spin, that leads the
public to the wrong conclusions."